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CS6223 Distributed Systems: Tutorial 2: Q1: in This Problem You Are To Compare Reading A File

The document contains 7 questions regarding distributed systems. Q1 asks about the requests per second a single-threaded and multithreaded file server can handle. Q2 discusses advantages and disadvantages of constructing concurrent servers using processes versus threads. Q3-4 ask about implementing synchronous communication primitives using only asynchronous or synchronous primitives respectively. Q5 asks if persistent asynchronous communication can be implemented using RPCs. Q6 discusses scalability issues of synchronous communication. Q7 covers advantages and disadvantages of asynchronous communication with non-blocking sends.

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Kassaye Yitbarek
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145 views11 pages

CS6223 Distributed Systems: Tutorial 2: Q1: in This Problem You Are To Compare Reading A File

The document contains 7 questions regarding distributed systems. Q1 asks about the requests per second a single-threaded and multithreaded file server can handle. Q2 discusses advantages and disadvantages of constructing concurrent servers using processes versus threads. Q3-4 ask about implementing synchronous communication primitives using only asynchronous or synchronous primitives respectively. Q5 asks if persistent asynchronous communication can be implemented using RPCs. Q6 discusses scalability issues of synchronous communication. Q7 covers advantages and disadvantages of asynchronous communication with non-blocking sends.

Uploaded by

Kassaye Yitbarek
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CS6223 Distributed Systems: Tutorial 2

 Q1: In this problem you are to compare reading a file


using a single-threaded file server and a multithreaded
server. It takes 15 msec to get a request for work,
dispatch it, and do the rest of the necessary
processing, assuming that the data needed are in a
cache in main memory. If a disk operation is needed,
as is the case one-third of the time, an additional 75
msec is required, during which time the thread sleeps.
How many requests/sec can the server handle if it is
single threaded? If it is multithreaded?
 Q2: Constructing a concurrent server by spawning a
process has some advantages and disadvantages
compared to multithreaded servers. Mention a few.
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CS6223 Distributed Systems: Tutorial 2

 Q3. Suppose you could make use of only transient


asynchronous communication primitives, including only
an asynchronous receive primitive. How would you
implement primitives for transient synchronous
communication?
 Q4. Now suppose you could make use of only transient
synchronous communication primitives. How would you
implement primitives for transient asynchronous
communication?
 Q5. Does it make sense to implement persistent
asynchronous communication by means of RPCs?

2
CS6223 Distributed Systems: Tutorial 2

 Q6. Explain why transient synchronous communication


has inherent (geographical) scalability problems, and
how these could be solved.
 Q7. What are the advantages (and disadvantages) of
asynchronous communication with non-blocking form of
send?

3
Tutorial 2: Q1 Ans.

Q1. Ans.
In the single-threaded case, the cache hits take 15 msec and
cache misses take 90 msec. The weighted average is 2/3 ×
15 + 1/3 × 90. Thus the mean request takes 40 msec and the
server can do 25 per second. For a multithreaded server, all
the waiting for the disk is overlapped, so every request takes
15 msec, and the server can handle 66 2/3 requests per
second.

4
Tutorial 2: Q2

Q2. Ans.
 An important advantage is that separate processes are
protected against each other, which may prove to be
necessary as in the case of a superserver handling
completely independent services. On the other hand, process
spawning is a relatively costly operation that can be saved
when using multithreaded servers. Also, if processes do need
to communicate, then using threads is much cheaper as in
many cases we can avoid having the kernel implement the
communication (note: the threads in the same process may
share the address space).

5
Tutorial 2: Q3 Ans.

Q3. Ans.
 Consider a synchronous send primitive. A simple
implementation is to send a message to the server using
asynchronous communication, and subsequently let the caller
continuously poll for an incoming acknowledgement or
response from the server. If we assume that the local
operating system stores incoming messages into a local
buffer, then an alternative implementation is to block the
caller until it receives a signal from the operating system that
a message has arrived, after which the caller does an
asynchronous receive.

6
Tutorial 2: Q4 Ans.

Q4. Ans.
 This situation is actually simpler. An asynchronous send is
implemented by having a caller append its message to a
buffer that is shared with a process that handles the actual
message transfer. Each time a client appends a message to
the buffer, it wakes up the send process, which subsequently
removes the message from the buffer and sends it its
destination using a blocking call to the original send primitive.
The receiver is implemented similarly by offering a buffer that
can be checked for incoming messages by an application.

7
Tutorial 2: Q5 Ans.

Q5. Ans.
 Yes, but only on a hop-to-hop basis in which a process
managing a queue passes a message to a next queue
manager by means of an RPC. Effectively, the service
offered by a queue manager to another is the storage of a
message. The calling queue manager is offered a proxy
implementation of the interface to the remote queue, possibly
receiving a status indicating the success or failure of each
operation. In this way, even queue managers see only
queues and no further communication.

8
Tutorial 2: Q6 Ans.

Q6. Ans.
 The problem is the limited geographical scalability. Because
synchronous communication requires that the caller is
blocked until its message is received, it may take a long time
before a caller can continue when the receiver is far away.
The only way to solve this problem is to design the calling
application so that it has other useful work to do while
communication takes place, effectively establishing a form of
asynchronous communication.

9
Tutorial 2: Q7 Ans.

Q7 Ans.
 In synchronous communication, a blocking send delays the
sending process until the message is received, which cannot
happen until the receiving process has executed a
corresponding receive operation.
 The delay is considerable when different processes in
different computers are involved.
 The advantage of a non-blocking send is that it avoids
delaying the sending process, allowing it to proceed with work
in parallel with the receiving process.

10
Tutorial 2: Q7 Ans. (Cont’d)

 A non-blocking form of send may also be used in situation


where blocking primitives can lead to deadlock.
 The disadvantage of non-blocking send is that the sender
must take effort to ensure that a message is really received
by the receiver.

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